In this episode, Colleen talked about her appearance on The Food Network. Now, you know I have talked about The Food Network and Vegetarianism before, as that was a very early post to this very blog.  I must give a note that this particular podcast was recorded in January 2007, when veganism was hardly ever mentioned.  I know that in recent days, a vegan cupcake was the winner of the cupcake wars and that a vegan (Natalie Portman) challenged the contestants on Top Chef or some show similar where chefs compete against each other.   But back in 2007, before veganism became trendy (it is, haven’t you heard?), they weren’t really doing much with it.

According to Colleen, the crew was fantastic with her.  They were professional and polite and everything else you’d want in a group of people filming you.   The segment they were filming was about “vegan barbecues”.    The crew spent the day with Colleen and her friends and everyone had a good time and loved the food.   Naturally, Colleen was a little nervous about the editing of the segment.   Which, apparently, was actually very well done (there is a rumor that the editor is a vegetarian).   However, the show the segment aired for was for a Bobby Flay barbecue show and he does episodes called “Crazy-ques“.

Yup, this segment was one of four stories about crazy barbecues.  The other segments included a barbecue taking place at a gas station and another taking place in Area 51.

Now, how does a veg*n barbecue compare to those weird things?  It doesn’t!  The only difference between a veg*n meal and a “regular” one is the lack of animal flesh/products (depending on whether its vegetarian or vegan).   And let me tell you …. VEGANS EAT THE SAME FOODS AS EVERYONE ELSE. The difference is what they DON’T eat.   Everyone, veg*n or omnivorous, eats fruits, vegetables, grains, beans … all normal food.  Yes, I’ll give you that most non-veg*ns probably don’t eat tofu and tempeh and seitan regularly, or probably never, but everything else that a vegan eats, so do non-vegans.  We just don’t make up something and say “it’s food”.   We eat the original food given to us by nature, before we learned to hunt and kill.   We eat food!  It’s not crazy!  People who don’t eat fruits and vegetables are not seen as crazy!  Even though I personally think not liking fruit is a little odd, it doesn’t mean I think you are crazy.

It’s just not!  It’s just a little different.    Thinking outside the box!

I just had to get that off my chest!  :)  Thank you for reading.

Also, I would love to see a vegetarian cooking show on the network.  I know of a lot of people who are interested in vegetarian cooking, even if they are not a vegetarian themselves.

For more information about Colleen Patrick-Goudreau check out her website:

#mce_temp_url#

Here is the podcast that this information came from:

Minding the Gatekeeper

Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here.  What have I been doing?  Well, a lot and nothing special.  July was a laid back month, not a whole lot happening, until the week of my birthday, which is the last week of the month.

And a few days later, birdies noticed:

I love this gift.  It makes me smile every time I see a bird come by to feed.  But then I see this:

I usually open up the patio door to scare him off.  I like squirrels just fine, but I put out food for the BIRDS, not a squirrel.  :)

And while we are talking about food, Matt and I made some homemade pizza a few weeks back.  Here is a picture of my creation:

Looks yummy, no?  I used Daiya vegan cheese … both the cheddar and mozzarella flavors … I promise to my vegetarian friends, that this cheese is awesome … there are also lightly sauteed red peppers and onions and some Upton’s seitan sausage.  YUM.

‘This is the best pizza I had ever had!

That is it for the food portion of this post.  Now I will talk about more FUN and family.

Matt, two of my sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, and Matt’s parents, and me took the boys (nephews) and our baby niece to Idlewild park.  Here is a photo of the kids before the day officially started.  I called it the “While Everyone Was Still in a Good Mood” photo.

Joey, Jacob, Katelyn, Nicholas (Left – Right)

However, I ended up having to say “Some of the cutest kids in the world” photo as every one was so good.  Each kid, and maybe even an adult or two, had one little meltdown, but it was over quickly and the good moods and behavior returned.  It was a hot day, but not too much so as long as you didn’t stay in the sun for long.  It was fun.

Five days later, we celebrated our nephew Joey’s 7th birthday at his party.  He is such a cute kid and the most precious moment when the super shy Nicholas, who really doesn’t talk to me much, wanted to play ball with me.  It was so touching and sweet.  I enjoyed every minute of the attention he wanted to give me.

Later that afternoon, Matt and I spent three hours raking algae from our pond.  Yes, it was as fun as it sounded.  We learned an important lesson here.  Don’t let the algae get out of control!  What do we know? It’s our first pond.

The next day we attended Kennywood for Matt’s work summer picnic.  Kennywood has the world’s best French fries and even though the company provided lunch, we still made sure to get some of them.   We lasted three hours.  I don’t know why, but we just don’t enjoy that park as much as we used to.  The Thunderbolt and the Racer are some of the best coasters in the world, but after you ride those … you are left with mostly spinny rides that make me ill.   And the park feels small, so you can walk around it multiple times and check on lines.  I LOVE amusement parks, and I think I like the idea of Kennywood more than Kennywood.

When I was a young girl, I used to think the park was SO BIG and so much fun.  I guess these things change with age.  There is definitely a nostalgic factor at play here.

Here is what I came up with:

It was a rice blend of white, brown, red and wild with grilled onions, yellow zucchini and red peppers, and black beans on top.  It was so YUM!

Since we didn’t go anywhere on Saturday or Sunday, I decided to do some cooking yesterday.   I made the Southern Greens and beans again, cause they are so yummy and easy to make.   But this time, I decided to try one of the recipes in Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet.  The recipe I attempted, Polenta Casserole with Seitan, was chosen simply because I bought polenta (not knowing what to do with it at the time), and thought this was a good way to use it up.

This recipe was sort of hard for me to make.  Because my ingredients weren’t quite right.  I’ll start at the beginning.

First step of the recipe calls for cooking the polenta and the cauliflower in a big pot for 30 minutes.  Okay, that sounds easy, right?  Well, I had pre-cooked polenta.  So I didn’t know what to do!  I figured that if it was already cooked and eventually being baked, that I didn’t need to do this step.  So I put the cauliflower into the microwave to cook, and thought that ultimately I would save time.

I went to the next step, which was placing the seitan slices on the bottom on the pan with the corn and asparagus.  Okay … another easy one right?  Not in this house!  The recipe called for 8 ounces of seitan.  One of my packages was exactly 8 ounces.  I took it out, placed it in the bottom … um, that didn’t even cover a third of the pan.  Hmm…. so I had a different package that was actually 1 pound and some ounces … I used that as well as the stuff that I had already put in there.  I had a little more than I needed but thought a little extra protein never hurt anyone.

So the cauliflower was done enough … and the next step was to mash the polenta and cauliflower until they were the consistency of mashed potatoes.  Well, I ended up needing to use the electric mixer and it was lumpy … I never got it right.  I put the extra ingredients in the mixture.   At the end I spooned in the peas and I added red pepper because I love red pepper.

Poured the polenta/cauliflower mash on top of the seitan mixture as directed and baked.  I had leftover polenta mixture, but I just tossed that.

And I thought to myself that this had better goshdarn taste well, cause it was a real pain to make!  It smelled really good!

Here it is right out of the oven:

And with the first slice taken out:

I made a small greens salad on the side, and sat down and took my first bite and ….. BLAH!  BLAND!  And I like bland food.  Or food as its supposed to taste.

What I think happened was two things … the seitan … too much and in this recipe it didn’t get a chance to absorb the flavors of things around it.  And the other being, obviously, the polenta topping itself.   I think I could make this again and have it taste better, but I won’t bother.  In the meanwhile, I’m going to separate the seitan from the polenta, and spice up the polenta and eat that and the seitan … well, I’ll see what I can dig up as far as sauces go and eat that.   I am a big fan of seitan so this was a disappointing experiment.

On the plus side, I made a really, really yummy soup a few days ago.  Recipe taken from the February 2010 Yoga Journal.  The name, Green Soup with Sweet Potatoes.  So yummy, and I ate it all over the next few days.

Here is what it looks like:

And its very important to note:

I tried a Sharon Fruit and it tastes just like a persimmons, except without a pit and the skin is edible. Yum!

I’ll be back with more stuff soon!

See, I honestly believed that I had cats for pets.  They are small, they are furry, they have whiskers and they purr.  They also eat cat food, watch birds and squirrels, and love to kill some furry fake mice.  But … they really act like pigs!  Seriously.  We meal feed around here, so everyone except Joey and Indy, who get more due to their age, eats two times per day.  But ten minutes after a meal, if one of us goes into the kitchen, we are followed by cats who meow and think they need more.  After Joey finishes one of his mid-afternoon or midnight feedings, a bunch of them will rush the bathroom door where he eats so that they can fight over who gets to finish the food.  I love when Joey finishes it all, they are all like “What?  Where’s all the food?”

The constant begging … I mean, they get enough food, but they always want more.  Maybe vulture is a better word than pigs.  But it just cracks me up the way they go nuts for any food.  If Matt and I are eating, they watch us.  Fuzzy loves to run into the kitchen and leap on the counter under the cabinet where the treats are.  Then he meows and looks cute.  Sorry, Fuzzy, you are a bit overweight, I’m not giving you any.  And its really hard to resist him!  He’s so cute.

But then, I guess I have no room to talk, as I pigged out on a vegan cheese pizza for lunch.  I should have cooked half of it, then I wouldn’t have eaten it all.  I should have only eaten half of it, and wrapped the rest up.  But I was so thrilled that there was vegan cheese that actually tastes good.

Yes, that is what I said.  I found vegan cheese that tastes good! And…. its not soy based.

I bought it at Vegan Essentials.com and its called Daiya cheese.   I bought both a small bag of shredded cheese and a pizza using it by the company Rossini.  When I received the shipment, I opened the bag of shredded and tasted it.  I did a happy dance.  I finally ate the pizza today and OMG … you can’t even tell its vegan.

So for all you dairy-avoiders, I highly recommend Daiya.  It’s expensive.  Check their website for where to buy it.  You won’t be sorry.

The 21-day Vegan Kickstart Challenge officially ended on the 21st of January, and they took the content down.  I thought they’d leave it up.  I didn’t start on the first day because of travel and illness.  But I was wrong.  The first time this year.  I have a few more credits, so its okay.

Where does that leave me?  Well… the same place.  Trying to maintain as high of a level of vegan as possible, and trying to eat more whole foods and cook more.  I have a ton of cookbooks and assorted recipes, so I can still try making tasty new things.   I can ignore the complicated ones.  The challenge starts again March 1, so maybe I’ll do it again, and this time eat the food as “assigned” every day, except for the days there are foods I don’t like.

Yesterday, I have to admit.  I had cheese.  At first, it wasn’t intentional.  We had had plans to go to a friends house to watch a movie, and we knew that we would be getting pizza.  I had 100% intention of having either half a pizza or a small one ordered without cheese for me.  Last time I had pizza, I removed the cheese, and had three toppings and extra sauce and it was yummy!  However, during the day, my delightful husband offered to make macaroni and cheese for lunch and I said that that sounded good … totally forgetting that I was eating vegan!   So, I figured … what the hey and ordered regulation pizza.  It was white pizza too, which I haven’t had in a long time.

My stomach didn’t feel too bad, even with the extra infusion of heart shaped Smiley cookies.  Or two.  Or three.  Actually, I was fine, stomach wise, but my nose clogged up big time.  I didn’t actually feel bloated until this afternoon.   So now I know … if I must, only one serving of dairy per day.

In other GOOD news, I had a very nice physical therapy session today.  My therapist says I am doing really, really well and gettting stronger every day.  She said that there was no reason I couldn’t participate in a racing event in October (location to be determined).   I can do a smaller race running, if I want.  Or walk a half.  Or run half of a half and walk the other half of the half.  That makes me happy.  Long distances are out for good, or at least a long while, she reminded me.  I can handle this.  It’s not like I could run a half marathon anyway. 

And I FORGOT to mention that I did try one other recipe from the challenge.  It was a Sunday morning, and I received the day’s menu, which called for Sweet Potato Pudding for breakfast.  That sounded really good.  It has oatmeal in it which I figured would make it nice and filling.  I had to cook and then cool the sweet potatoes (yay for the microwave at times), then I mixed it in the blender.  I put it in a bowl, sat down, ready to savor it.  And it was delicious!  However, it wasn’t cutting it as a breakfast for me.  It was truly a pudding, so therefore it became designated as a dessert.  Yay for dessert!  Using pumpkin would be equally delicious.  Adding the oatmeal is great … added fiber and even protein.  Not everyone is aware of how much protein is actually in oatmeal.  I ended up with a bagel with Better Than Cream Cheese.

I think for breakfast, it would have worked for me had I made oatmeal the traditional way and then mixed in the cooked sweet potato into the cereal.

I have been reading Wesley the Owl.  I highly recommend it.  It’s a very cute story and written well.  A fast, fun read.  Look for it on my sister blog later this week at jennreviewsthings.com.

Tomorrow, my Fuzzy goes for a teeth cleaning.  Wish us all luck.

On Sunday, I did make one new recipe, which  is the Vegetarian Swiss steak.  This is a seitan based food with tomato sauce, onions, peppers.  I did not have any green peppers, so I didn’t use, but I think it would have benefitted from them.  I also left out the mushrooms.  I am the one vegetarian in the world who does not like mushrooms.    I get asked that all the time “How can you be vegetarian and not like mushrooms?”  Um, us vegetarians like LOTS of things.  I don’t like broccoli, cauliflower or uncooked carrots either.  Or pears or grapefruit.  If this makes me weirder, so be it. 

Sorry, off on a tangent there ….

Here is how the Swiss steak looked right out of the oven.

And here it is on my plate:

looking a little less dog foody.

But I promise … it was tasty and the recipe makes a lot and I ate this for four days and now I am tired of it!  But it is a great source of clean protein and very low carb.

And here is a photo of the Roasted Red Pepper Soup which is less digusting looking.  I didn’t want to leave you with that other image in your memory.

On another note, exercise has been a little more exciting to report on.  I finally feel better and on Sunday, I worked out for the first time in a long time.  I ellipticalled for 30 minutes … which caused me to have a mini-migraine.  On Monday, it was full blown migraine, so I only did my PT … and Monday is the day that I go to the facility, so it was a long session.   Yesterday, I cleaned up around the house and I did a cardio/ab workout followed by my at-home PT.

I’m excited about exercising again, and interested to see what my hip will and won’t permit me to do.

That’s all really for now!

He was referred to a veterinary internal medicine specialist, where he received an ultrasound, which was also inconclusive, and a fine needle aspirate of the liver was sent out for cytology.  At this point, we were looking either at cholangiohepatitis or cancer.   And the cytology didn’t help.  The first order of business was to treat for the cholangiohepatitis, which is a long course of antibiotics.  If the liver enzymes stabilize, then its likely the hepatitis and NOT cancer.

Thursday, I received a call from the veterinary center and guess what?  His ALT was down to 160!  Yay!  The antibiotics are helping.  Not that I needed bloodwork to tell me that, as he has returned totally to his kitten like antics and his very very large appetite. 

This is my bad boy Indy

Now for the Vegan Challenge.

Saturday was my weigh in day and I was down 2.2 pounds.  Yay.

Friday food was good.

*Breakfast was oatmeal with maple syrup and peacans

*Lunch was leftover couscous confetti salad

*Dinner was out and I had bbq seitan pita with fries and a salad

Saturday, well, I did remain vegan except for some accidental mayo, but healthy wasn’t as strong.

*Breakfast was hash browns and an English Muffin

*Lunch was at Burger King … a BK veggie and small onion ring

*Dinner was Domino’s pizza … no cheese, extra sauce and black olives, onion and spinach

But that is not overcomerable (is that a word?) … I will do better this week for sure, and I hope to make a return to doing cardio.

And I really wish I could get pictures into this blog!

I only knew that I wanted to try to eliminate dairy.  Why?  Well, there are many reasons, but the one that makes the most sense is because I am allergic to the milk proteins casein and whey.  Let me tell you … casein and whey are hidden in everything!  And the other MAIN reason is that as a vegetarian, it only makes sense to progress into this way of eating, for me.  I already refuse to wear leather, suede, wool or use products that have been tested on animals.   If you want to get into it further, you can certainly find reasons why many experts are saying that it is not good for us, and you can certainly find out how dairy is an even crueler industry than eating the cows that dairy comes from.

And because I was giving up the dairy, I stepped it up to eliminate eggs and to try to eat as many whole foods as possible to try to ease up reliance on convenience foods.  I think that switching to whole foods, foods that come from nature, that I actually have to cook and/or prepare, will be the key to my finally reaching my goal weight.

This style of eating is also just naturally low in sugar.  I am not deliberately eliminating that.  If I find something vegan and has sugar, I will consider it.  And I don’t mean fruit.  Fruit sugar is another thing altogether.

To help me with this challenge, I decided to follow the guidelines and recipes of the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart by the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).  You can find information about it here:

I tried to start on Monday, but although it was vegan, except for some butter, I don’t count it since I relied on what I had and not on whole foods.

On Tuesday, I made the Confetti Couscous Salad.  I had to adjust it, as I thought I had raisins and cabbage, but I had neither.  Well, I had cabbage, it was just not edible.  I deliberately left out the carrots and substituted dried cranberries for the raisins.  This was absolutely yummy.

Wednesday, which was even better, I had oatmeal for breakfast, for lunch I had the couscous salad leftovers (and I still have more!) and I made the Carrot Red Pepper Soup, without the carrots, so essentially it was just Roasted Red Pepper Soup.  This was very easy to make and very tasty … but needed some spices … maybe some Italian seasoning.  I also made the “Southern” Beans and Greens.  I put Southern in quotes, cause I am quite sure that in the South, it ain’t vegan!  My beans of choice were organic Pinto and my greens were kale.  I thought these were really good.  This mixture could also be wrapped in a tortilla (thanks for the idea Christy) or served with rice, which is what I had for lunch today.

I don’t aspire to follow the food plan to the letter, but I am definitely staying vegan, whole foods and using the recipes on the plan.   I’ll be eating out a little this weekend, but I will be doing my best to stick to whole food, low fat, and vegan.

It’s only been three full days, and I can tell you I feel better already.  My stomach doesn’t feel all pouchy and full.  I feel lighter.  I hope to take off a few pounds at the end of this as well, especially once my cough goes away completely and I can exercise again.

Adios, my friends and readers, I’ll be back tomorrow with a more complete list and maybe some photos and other updates.

*I was actually directed to this particular challenge by my very beautiful, talented and intelligent friend, Emily, a Holistic Health Counselor and owner of Triumph Wellness.  Her site is here:  and her blog can be found here: